Halloween at 1OC

The vice-president has some pretty nice porch furniture (pictured here, behind Bark Vader and Superdog) at the Navel Observatory the Naval Observatory.

Rosemary

Today's Time WH Blog pic is one of the sous-chef (the man that's one sugar beet away from being chef) clipping a bit of rosemary from the Kennedy Garden.

Open post: Nothing new

I went looking for new things to add to the site or to blog about and got off track looking at a political blog which distracted me with an old speech by Bill Clinton where he uses the phrase "Yore Kippur," so I went searching for it and found a small number of reliable sources that also used it but no explanation, so I put a note on the talk page of "Yom Kippur" article in Wikipedia.

Sometimes I hate the Internet.

OOPDATE: It's apparently just a typo, altho why it appeared in a presidential speech in multiple places, I don't know. You know who's responsible for this? Some schmendrick, I bet. Possibly a fakakta schmendrick.

Time's photo blog

Time's photo blog is an interesting thing. On occasion, I've gotten some very good WH interior photos from the site, altho they tend to be odd and ambiguous. Today's photo is of a "lower press office," which I assume to mean an office belonging to the press secretary's staff located in the ground floor of the West Wing and not an office shared by press correspondents from The Peoria Thrifty Nickel and Inside Edition.

UPDATE: Anonymous explains that it's actually a press secretary staff office off the briefing room.

A couple of days ago—as was noted in comments by Winnipeg's Mike B—Time labeled a picture of the Diplomatic Reception Room as the "Indian Treaty Room" (which is a big meeting hall in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the White House). Anyone who reads the comments on this blog knows that I have no room to criticize anyone for mislabeling WH locations, but that was an odd one.

Generally, the pictures are not of the action of an event but of preparation for it or of figures at the margins, often members of the press themselves. They expanded it to allow for pictures of the "race to the White House" and not just the WH itself, which is a little annoying. Sometimes I think it's really meant as an artsy outlet for the creative tendencies of the WH press photographers, but some of the shots are just boring or newsy.

Wingnut's Workings

Thank you Derek for allowing me to be a guest author in this blog of yours. It's a true honor. Derek's purpose here is to allow me to announce key achievements in the progress of White House 3D modeling. So from time to time once a model is complete, I will let you fine folks know what's new. I just wanted to post this message to clarify the current goal.

The interior model being worked on right now is the West Wing. I won't be giving the West Wing model to Derek until it is totally complete. After that I will begin modeling the entire Main Residence. Once a room is complete, the model will be sent to Derek and made available to you. This way you won't have to wait until the entire house is done to enjoy the progress.

The reason I chose do the West Wing first is that it gives me a chance to practice methods that conserve computer memory thus making it easier for you to navigate the models. If there's any part of the White House I want to get right and as detailed/efficient as possible - it's the Residence. Computers vary in their processing power. If at any time you find the model to be slow, or the textures of the furniture disappear momentarily while you are navigating a model, this can be a memory issue or a video-card issue. I certainly would never expect people to do hardware upgrades just to view my models. I just wouldn't want you to be frustrated over navigation problem without knowing what may be causing it.

My one caveat in this is that detail will be important to me but in some cases it will be impossible to get every detail correct like certain crown moldings, certain fabrics, or certain rugs. Every effort will be made to balance detail with computer-efficiency. If you are hoping to zoom in on the relief-detail of a Monroe chair you may be disappointed, but it will look reasonably accurate.

Again I thank you for the kind comments so far, and as always I appreciate Derek's support and encouragement.

Pete :)

Pete Sharkey: model citizen

Pete has passed along a link to his new blog Wingnut's Workings, where he is documenting his progress on his fantastic White House models. Anyone who has read this blog should be familiar with his Oval Office and White House exterior models, but now he's completing the West Wing interior! It will take months to finish, he warns, but already he has dizzyingly gorgeous pics of the Cabinet Room and others. To Pete, I award the Charles McKim Astonishing Accomplishment Loving Cup (the "Charlie Cup").

I have 13% of all Library of Congress materials

The cat is out of the bag. While I was in Washington, I stopped by the Library of Congress and slipped away with 13% of their materials. I stuffed the 17 million items in my pants and walked out without permission (the trick is, as you waddle past the guard, to mumble "I have got to go on a diet!").

My motive was simply to have materials to start my own library, but I also always wanted to learn something about radial aircraft engines, the Polish monarchy, and Native American weaving. In my defense, I intended to photocopy the materials and then put them all back. Which reminds me: I also took one of those high-speed book photocopiers and 80,000 reams of paper.

WH Visitors Center rarities

I added a couple of photos that I shot in the WH Visitors Center in DC. They were 19th century images of the executive offices that I hadn't seen before. After some clean-up, they turned out quite nice.

Inside the White House

Added several photos I got from Inside the White House by Betty Boyd Caroli.

Big storm knocked out access to the series of tubes that is the Internets. Just got access back after about 28 hours. What did I do in the meantime? Law & Order marathon on USA. And bailing water out of my basement.

White House fall garden tour

From the White House:

The Annual White House Fall Garden Tour will be was held on Saturday, October 13, 2007, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, October 14, 2007, from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Here is a pic of the Kennedy Garden, courtesy of visitor Lafayette.

Miscellany

Added a few various photos, including a couple sent by Stephen B that include the Carter bedroom. Anybody know what issue that came from?

Lincoln Museum photos

I've now posted all my Lincoln Museum photos in a gallery also.

Photo gallery

I've posted the first batch of photos (from day 3, actually) in a gallery on Fotki. I'll post day 1 and day 2 in the next couple of days.

UPDATE: I've posted all the photos now.

Chocolate mystery

During the trip home, I read most of the kitchens issue of WH History (issue 20). In it, former pastry chef Roland Mesnier mentions that, on the morning of September 11, 2001, he was in "what we call the Chocolate Room, which is located near to the exit door on the Ground Floor." A PVC Chocolates page mentions it also, saying it's a "recent addition... the size of a large closet." I'm guessing that this is the space referred to in the HABS photos as the Refrigerator Room, but the picture of Mesnier in the "Chocolate Shop" (p 41) doesn't look like the HABS picture of the Refrigerator Room.

Home again

I got up early and, worried about traffic, took a cab to the airport right after breakfast. It was a quick drive, tho, and the gates are right off security, so I got there with plenty of time to spare. Got home to find Betty Boyd Carroli's Inside the White House waiting for me, along with a DVD of the Kennedy tour.

DC day 3: monumental error

Today I got up late and failed to get to the Washington Monument in time to get a ticket; they were all out by 10:30. So I went to the Natural History Museum, which was my plan anyway while I waited for my time to go the WM. After an exhausting couple of hours there seeing my fill of trilobites and buying the Hope Diamond for my mother, I walked over to the White House and shot it in full sun.

By this time, my back was killing me because, over the past twelve years as a technology consultant, my back muscles have been replaced with Hostess cream filling (I can explain the process and cost benefit with a PowerPoint presentation and Excel spreadsheet).

Nevertheless, I stopped in and toured at the Latrobe-designed Stephen Decatur House (great call, John). It's in the process of being restored to its early-19th-century origins; thankfully, the first thing they restored was Latrobe's kick-ass air-conditioning; you would have thought it was a meat locker. It's an unusual house in that the kitchen is up front, as in a modern house, and the entertaining rooms are upstairs. It has the same in-frame shutters that the White House once had. And, authentic to its period, the front lamps are lit by gas and no photography is allowed inside—altho woodcuts and scrimshaw are presumably okay.

Then I cabbed it over to the Spy Museum, which was way better and more popular than I had imagined. It's built into a storefront and doesn't look like much from the outside but is designed very compactly, so there is a lot to see (but no photography!). The tight space adds to the atmosphere of espionage (as does the rampant, surreptitious camera-phone use), and the exhibits are very well done. Of course, at $16 a head and patrons streaming in and out for the full extended-hour day, they can afford to make it really cool. By the way, if anybody asks, my name is Billy Henderson; I'm a 14-year-old American student here in London on vacation for 9 days, and I have always had a mustache and a limp.

Oh, and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum just opened with—I kid you not—lines around the block. I shot it after it had closed and the lines were only half-way around the block. It's a pretty cool exterior design, with all the glass, altho I think they missed an opportunity to do a Nighthawks/Boulevard of Broken Dreams take with JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and James Dean.

Washington DC

Today I toured the Capitol and the Air & Space Museum and took pictures of the LOC and Supreme Court buildings. I'll upload all my trip photos to a gallery and post a link when I get a chance.

The Capitol was interesting; it was a weird combination of palace and rabbit warren. I took several pictures, but the best is the one everyone takes: the Apotheosis of Washington in the ceiling of the Rotunda. Man, I gotta get a rotunda.

Then I visited the White House Visitor Center, which was a real disappointment. I knew there wasn't much there, but really... I was shocked to find that it was barely more than a rather poor gift shop (altho it's in a beautiful space in the side of the Commerce building). There were a few pieces of White House furniture, a few pieces of old plaster moldings, one nice 1801 model of the WH, and lots of big photographs. In the corner, they had a couple of TVs playing one of the WH documentaries. Not bad, mind you; just disappointing.

It's unseasonably hot and humid this weekend and things are a little more spread out than I thought, so getting around is tiring. I haven't seen too many of the trolleys or tourmobiles, so I didn't get a pass for those. I've taken a few taxis, which are plentiful.

I'm too dumb to have brought a backpack to carry stuff, so I haven't bought much. What else? Umm, sodas are cheap on the street. It's a good-looking city, which frankly surprised me. There are a lot of German tourists. Cops are everywhere, and they seem to be attached to different departments. They all have their own metal barricades that say "Property of the Supreme Court Police" or whatever. Apparently, they're afraid that other cops are going to steal their barricades.

UPDATE: Went out after dark again and snapped the WH (tripods not allowed on the WH side of the PA Ave, by the way), the inside of the Jefferson Memorial, FDR Memorial, and Vietnam memorial. Somehow I missed the Korean Memorial in the dark, but I did see the signpost from MASH in the American History temporary exhibit in the Air & Space Museum, so that's something.

I can't believe how dark it is around the memorials. Half the street lamps are out and the others are so dim you have to use the light from your cellphone to find them. Even at nearly midnight there was a crowd at the Vietnam Memorial; it was so dark that it took several tries before I got a nice pic, and the crowd had emptied out.

In DC

Made it to DC and went down to the White House before sunset and shot some pics (see What's New). For some reason, there were terns flocking all over on the south side. Maybe the chefs ruined a big fish dinner and tossed the evidence out on the tennis court. White-soled shoes only, birds!

I also went around on the south side and shot the new structure there. It looks temporary to me, but certainly very solid. Perhaps it's meant to cover some extensive below-grade expansion about to begin. I also noticed some earth-moving equipment hidden in the trees on the east side, but I think there has been some work going on there for a while.

UPDATE: Went out again after dark and got some great photos of the memorials with a tripod and bracketed exposures. I shot the Lincoln, Washington, WW2, and Jefferson memorials and plan to get the White House and other memorials tomorrow night.

Old stuff

Added a few old exteriors in the last couple of days.